From this story some may have supposed that the “primitive” Irishmen had not yet got beyond the rude fishing-boats of savage life. But we have here in fact only an instance of the strange contrasts which make Irish history so full of wonder, so rich in human interest. In the midst of a world of furious trade and war, Irish poets and mystics, obedient to the ancient message of their masters, still went down to the sea-brink abiding there “the revelation of knowledge.” In the vast solitude of sea and sky beyond which, in which, waited the revelation, the seen and the unseen were confounded and limits of space and time fell away in infinity. The everlasting gates were there, the way of the soul’s escape from imprisonment in shadows, the opening of the Eternal Reality. Abandoning will and fear, they cast themselves on Nature and the God immanent in Nature, and summoned by the silent call went out in faith, “they recked not where.” Thus in Ireland old worlds were ever intermixed with new. Pilgrims cast themselves on the sea in curraghs, and drifted to the Faroes and to Iceland carrying with them the power of piety and learning. But there were also Irish traders with business minds. They, like the French, learned from the Scandinavians to build ships, and like the French, used Norse words for their new sea-faring vessels, “brown-planked” warships, and merchant ships, ships large and small, and boats; and for the planks and sides, bottom-boards, row-benches, taff-rail, gunwale, the creaking, of the row-bench, the steersman. They learned too from the Scandinavians their method of raising a navy by dividing the country into districts, each of which had to equip and man so many ships which were to assemble at the summons to arms into the united war fleet--the levy and the fleet both called by Norse words. Sagas of the Danish time tell of “the fleet of the men of Munster,” of “Munster of the swift ships,” six or seven score of them ready to sail to Dundalk or to the Mull of Cantyre at the call of the king of Cashel. The Irish had also their fleets of merchant ships. An old poem of about 900 A.D. gives a description of the dwellers on the coast from Carn or Mizen Head to Cork (the Irish clan of the O’Mahoneys chief among them)-- “High in beauty, Whose resolve is quiet prosperity.”